The Batcomputer's primary screen bathed the cave in a harsh blue glow.
Every satellite feed on the wall showed the same visual: atmospheric blackout across North America, save for the shifting leviathans hovering over every major city.
Bruce stood motionless, gauntleted hands resting on the console.
"The worst-case scenario," he said, voice a flat rasp. "The government had to poke the hornet's nest."
Dick stood beside him, frozen, the usual acrobat's swagger gone. He stared at the thermal imaging, watching the jagged shadows kneel around the Washington courthouse in perfect, terrifying sync.
"What are we even looking at, Bruce?" Dick asked, voice tight. "Does he have a ceiling? How does one guy just pull an extinction-level army out of thin air?"
Bruce didn't blink, watching Daniel sit casually on the courthouse steps. "He doesn't have a ceiling. His apathy was the only defense this planet had. You don't provoke a sleeping lion just because it's quiet."
Dick pulled his eyes from the monitors, turning to Bruce, waiting for the tactical pivot. "So what's the play? Are we taking the Batwing? Are you going to do something?"
Bruce killed the audio feed from the panic in Washington. "No."
"No? Bruce, he's going to wipe the continent off the map in twenty-four hours."
"If I intervene, I become a variable. If I try to stop him, I become an enemy," Bruce said, eyes locked on the screen. "The government manufactured a suicide pact, Dick. Now they have twenty-four hours to figure out how to break it."
"I've profiled him," he continued, tracking the telemetry.
"He won't wipe the map. He isn't the type to slaughter millions of innocents just because the Pentagon annoyed him. His primary drive is his own household. A man who protects his own family that fiercely doesn't indiscriminately destroy others."
Dick raised an eyebrow. "Wow. That's a lot of trust coming from you."
"It's a psychological assessment," Bruce corrected.
"Right," Dick said, arms crossed, looking back at the footage. "But do you think everyone else is going to be as calm as you? Looking at that sky, people are going to panic."
"If they panic and engage him," Bruce said, turning back to the keyboard, "they're going to take a severe beating."
***
Washington D.C. The black sky over the courthouse plaza flared with a streak of emerald light.
Green Lantern slammed into the cracked pavement like a meteor, shattering concrete a few yards from the perimeter of kneeling shadow-beasts. Hal Jordan groaned, his hard-light aura flickering.
He pushed himself off the ground and looked up at the marble stairs, where Daniel was still sitting, resting his chin in his hand.
"Man," Hal groaned, wiping his mouth as the green glow faded. "You really made a mess out of everything, didn't you?" He forced a smirk. "Why don't we just stop this right now, before I have to beat your ass?"
Daniel yawned, stretching his neck, settling more comfortably on the cold marble step. "If I don't stop, how exactly will you make me? Not to piss you off, but you're weak as hell. Forget about beating me. Beat my army first. Then you can try to touch me."
He didn't raise a hand or say a word. He just shifted his eyes.
The nearest kneeling leviathan moved — didn't bother standing, just lunged, a shifting maw of jagged darkness snapping forward at bullet speed toward Hal's center of mass.
Hal's ring flared. A ten-foot wall of solid green energy materialized. The beast slammed into it; the light spider-webbed on impact with a high-pitched screech, the force dragging Hal backward across the concrete.
He gritted his teeth, morphing the shattered wall into a pair of heavy-caliber rotary cannons and opened fire.
Emerald artillery shells ripped into the shadow-beast's face, detonating in green flashes.
The leviathan didn't bleed, didn't flinch — the black mass just swallowed the explosions, warping like dense smoke before whipping a jagged limb down on Hal's position.
He threw his hands up, projecting a spherical dome shield just in time. The limb struck it like a freight train, cratering the pavement beneath him, driving him to his knees. The shield groaned, buckling under the weight of the beast.
Daniel watched from the steps, chin on his knuckles, like a man forced to sit through a bad movie.
Hal grunted, forcing himself up against the weight. His dome inverted, exploding outward into a dozen hard-light javelins that impaled the shadow-beast, shredding its form until it dissolved into ash.
He didn't stop. He launched off the cratered pavement, morphing his ring into a spinning buzzsaw and tore through a second leviathan.
Without missing a beat he materialized missile pods on his shoulders, blowing a third and fourth out of the air with concentrated blasts. A fifth lunged from his blind spot; he spun, drove a green fist through its center, and detonated it from the inside out.
The shadow vanished.
Hal dropped back to the pavement, chest heaving, aura flickering, dim. He wiped sweat from his jaw and looked toward the steps to gloat.
Then he looked past Daniel. Up at the sky.
The five he'd just killed were nothing. The black void was moving — hundreds more of the leviathans peeling out of the stratosphere, dead eyes locking on him. The entire horizon was a wall of teeth and darkness.
Hal's constructs fizzled out. He lowered his ring hand.
"Shit," he breathed.
Daniel sat on the marble stairs, exactly where he'd been the whole time, a wide, mocking smile spreading across his face.
"Yeah," he said. "Bullshit, correct."
*****
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